YouTube Transcript Keyword Search — Find Topics Inside Videos

What does YouTube Transcript Keyword Search do?

YouTube Transcript Keyword Search lets you search inside YouTube video transcripts for any keyword or phrase. Give it a list of video URLs and a search term — it finds exactly which videos mention the keyword and at which timestamps, returning matched segments with surrounding context.

This is ideal for podcast research, competitive intelligence, academic analysis, or building topic-specific video indexes — on the Apify platform.

Why use YouTube Transcript Keyword Search?

• Find topics inside videos — locate the exact moment a keyword is mentioned
• Batch search across many videos — check hundreds of URLs in one run
• Context snippets — see the text before and after each match for full context
• Timestamp precision — jump directly to the relevant moment in any video
• Research at scale — index video content for search engines, databases, or analytics tools

How to use YouTube Transcript Keyword Search

1. Open the Actor and click Try for free
2. Add YouTube video URLs to the videoUrls field
3. Enter your search keyword or phrase in the keyword field
4. Click Start — results appear in seconds
5. Download matched segments as JSON or CSV

Input

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0"
  ],
  "keyword": "machine learning",
  "language": "en"
}

Field	Type	Description	Default
videoUrls	array	YouTube video URLs to search	required
keyword	string	Keyword or phrase to search for	required
language	string	Transcript language code	en

Output

Each match record contains the video, the matched text, timestamp, and surrounding context.

{
  "videoId": "9bZkp7q19f0",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0",
  "keyword": "machine learning",
  "match": "machine learning models can now",
  "start": 143.2,
  "duration": 3.1,
  "context": "...this is how machine learning models can now predict outcomes with..."
}

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
videoId	string	YouTube video ID
videoUrl	string	Full YouTube URL
keyword	string	The searched keyword
match	string	The matching transcript segment
start	number	Timestamp of the match (seconds)
duration	number	Duration of matched segment
context	string	Surrounding transcript context

Cost

Pay-per-result pricing:

Volume	Estimated cost
100 videos searched	~$0.10–$0.50
1,000 videos	~$1.00–$5.00

Tips

• Use this Actor after YouTube Search Scraper to first find relevant video URLs, then search inside them
• Case-insensitive matching is used by default — no need to worry about capitalization
• For broad topic coverage, search multiple keyword variants in separate runs
• Export results to a spreadsheet to build a reference database of timestamped video quotes

FAQ

What if a video has no transcript? Videos without captions are skipped and noted in the output with an error field.

Is the keyword search case-sensitive? No — matching is case-insensitive.

Can I search for multi-word phrases? Yes — enter the full phrase in the keyword field.

Is this Actor maintained? Yes. Report bugs or feature requests in the Issues tab.

Need help or have questions? Open an issue in the Issues tab or reach out on Discord: maged03211